753: Southern Half

Title text: Also, if you read his speech at Rice, all his arguments for going to the moon work equally well as arguments for blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars.

During that speech, Kennedy said the sentence that the comic is referring to, and the map provided shows that the vast majority of the regions he mentioned are actually in the Northern Hemisphere, despite Kennedy calling them "the whole southern half of the globe", not to mention the Southern Hemisphere has regions which are not included (like Australia).

The actual meaning behind Kennedy's statement is likely a reference to the common lingo used describing the 'third world' as 'the Global South', which is a metaphorical rather than geographical description which includes all of the regions mentioned (though leaving out the USSR from Asia). At the time, a number of proxy wars between the U.S. and the USSR had broken out and were in progress in many third world countries across the entirety of the regions mentioned. Thus, Kennedy was describing the Cold War and his expectation that it would continue, and that the 'Global South' would be the actual battlefield. Out-of-context, and insisting on a literal geographic interpretation for the words, this part of the speech sounds particularly funny.

The title text refers to a September 1962 speech Kennedy gave at Rice University. One of the most famous quotes from that speech is, "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Randall suggests that all of the arguments Kennedy made for going to the moon could also serve the cause of many different "innovations", such as blowing up the moon, sending cloned dinosaurs into space, or, ridiculously, constructing a towering penis-shaped obelisk on Mars.

"The great battlefield for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe - Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East."

-John F. Kennedy, 1961 speech to Congress.

[An ovoid world map, with Latin America colored in red, Africa in yellow, the Middle East in green, and Asia in Blue. There is an arrow pointing to the top of the map marked 'northern half', and another arrow pointing to the bottom half marked 'southern half.' The majority of these places are actually in the northern half.]

Okay, so I'm half a century late on this, but it's been bugging me: did JFK own a globe?

However, leave off Latin America and the rest seem to be pretty much in the hemisphere centered at the Persian Ocean.--108.162.215.9 07:14, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

I was under the impression that latin America did not include south America, just the part of north America south of the USA. 108.162.219.7 02:20, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

Randall lacks to take in account the USA-centric view of the USA. If you define "south" as "more south than the USA", the speech sounds legit (especially if you subtract the Soviet Union from Asia - surely the enemy but not the "battlefield" Kennedy talked about). 108.162.230.89 12:12, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah I see, so the USA-centric view puts the equator as the southern border of USA to Mexico... So pretty much everything is the southern Hemisphere then! Makes sense! Lol. 108.162.221.224 00:46, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

The thing is, JFK did say 'southern half' and not 'southern area'. I understand your argument, but half is half, no matter your perspective. In Australia, 'southern half of the globe' doesn't mean 'Antarctica'. 108.162.250.160 09:23, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Look. Kennedy was zoned out on painkillers most of the time. He didn't know what he was saying and probably didn't care. The praise lavished on his Presidency is mostly hype. Jakee308 (talk) 02:50, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Is it possible that the dash in Kennedy's quote should be a comma? In which case he was saying the battlefield is everywhere except US, Canada, and Europe? 108.162.221.17 07:52, 6 August 2015 (UTC)

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